The Reconnection in the Lab
by rentchica10
Summary: A series of casefics during which Angela and Hodgins realize what we already know...how they still feel about each other.


**Disclaimer**: I do not own Bones or any of its characters, only the ones I've made up for this story.

**A/N**: The camp in this story is real, its location is accurate, and many of the characters introduced in this or later chapters are based on real people (or composites of real people) – I tried to work from that whole "write what you know" concept. The bug stuff is mostly made up, but the way the bones are used is real – if you want more detail, message me and I'll let you know.

**The Girl Scout in the Campsite**

The girls of Junior troop #954 spread out in the woods just outside the Maple Hollow campsite to search for logs. It was their first camp-out as a troop; their troop leaders wanted them to do as much as possible for themselves, which at that moment, included finding all the wood for the fire they were having that evening. As the sun finished setting, the ten girls in the troop walked slowly through the throng of trees with only one flashlight to guide them. A crisp autumn wind howled swept around them, ominously blowing the leaves off of the trees. Suddenly, one of the girls screamed in shock.

"Emily! Anything you find in the woods isn't an emergency! You shouldn't be screaming unless there is a spider bigger than your face or your eyeball is in your hand!" - shouted Mrs. Morgan, the troop leader. Normally, this refrain elicited giggles from the younger girls, but those who had already gathered around Emily stayed silent, and from a distance, looked as though they were hunched over someone lying on the ground. Their faces were pale and frozen in place. At the almost eerie silence, Mrs. Morgan quickened her steps, terrified about one of her girls getting hurt. When she reached the small clearing in the trees where Emily had screamed, Mrs. Morgan gasped and turned pale as she realized why. Right in front of her, slightly covered in fallen leaves, was a human skull.

***

Dr. Brennan was just about to go to sleep early for the first time in weeks when her phone rang.

"Brennan," - she answered, yawning.

"It's Booth. We have a case."

"Now?"

"What, were you busy?" - Booth asked incredulously.

"Well, technically not...I was trying to get to sleep."

"It's only 10:30! On a Friday night!"

"I've been up later than usual for the past few nights and my body needs to get more REM sleep so that I can properly function in the lab to the best of my abilities."

"Whatever, Bones. Just be ready in 20 minutes so I can pick you up and head to the scene."

"Fine. Can you bring me some coffee while you are at it?" -Brennan said as she reluctantly pulled herself up out of bed and began to get dressed for what promised to be a long night of work.

***

"So where are we going, Booth?" - Dr. Brennan asked as she slid into his car.

"Camp Potomac Woods. It's a Girl Scout camp about an hour outside the city."

"The Girl Scouts found the remains?"

"A troop was planning on camping there for the weekend when of the girls found a skull in the woods. That's when –"

"Did they compromise the remains?" - Dr. Brennan interrupted, immediately concerned.

"Bones, they're ten years old and traumatized by finding a human skull. They ran away screaming – I'm pretty sure they didn't touch anything," - reassured Booth in that disbelieving tone he reserved just for her.

"You know, anthropologically speaking, the reasons that girls join a sub-culture such as the Girl Scouts are very interesting."

"Okay, Bones, just remember that these are very frightened little girls, and not everyone finds bones and sub-cultures as interesting as you do."

"I know that," - Dr. Brennan said matter-of-factly and she turned on the stereo.

***

As Booth and Brennan pulled into the parking lot of the camp, an older man with a flannel shirt and a cowboy hat walked up to meet them.

"You must be the people from the F-B-I," - he said, drawing out the letters as though they were each a separate word. - "I'm Jonah Kingsley, the property manager of this camp."

"Special Agent Seeley Booth, and this is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan."

"You were here when the remains were located?" - interjected Dr. Brennan.

"No ma'am, they just called me afterwards. I haven't even been down to the campsite yet. Figured I'd take you down there myself."

"Why is it that I always have new shoes every time we have to tramp through someplace dirty?" - Booth muttered to himself as they followed Jonah up a dirt path lit only by their flashlights.

"Perhaps it is because you continue to buy nice new shoes even though you know that your job requires you to walk through dirty crime scenes on a regular basis," - replied Dr. Brennan.

"You know what, Bones, it was a rhetorical question, and –" - Booth stopped short as Jonah shined his flashlight on the skull that was found earlier that evening. - "That's a little kid."

"Judging by the size of the skull, I'd say a female somewhere between the ages of 5 and 8," - added Dr. Brennan. She knelt down and began sifting through the leaves and dirt to uncover the rest of the skeleton, still mostly intact.

"Anything else you can tell from the bones?" - asked Booth.

"Not without proper lighting and going back to the lab. I need all of these packed up and taken to the

Jeffersonian, as well as soil and plant samples from the area," - Dr. Brennan directed to the FBI forensics techs who had followed them to the scene. - "Dr. Hodgins should be able to use the insects on the body to determine time of death, and the skull is intact and complete, so Angela should be able to do a facial reconstruction easily," she added to Booth.

"Mr. Kingsley, do you know of any girls who have ever gone missing from this campsite?" - Booth asked. But when he turned around, Mr. Kingsley was gone. Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth exchanged knowing looks. - "Well, it seems as though we have our first suspect," said Booth.

***

"All right, people, what do we know so far?" - asked Dr. Cam Saroyan as she surveyed the bones laid out on the table of the Medico-Legal Lab's platform.

"The amount of decomposition of the bones, along with the insects found around the body, suggest that it has been buried for about three and a half years," - said Dr. Hodgins.

"Okay, so we have time of death. What about cause?"

"Not yet, but I did find something interesting about the bones that may help us to identify the victim," - put in Wendell as he approached the bones.

"Let's hear it."

"When you compare the two femurs, the left one is approximately half an inch shorter than the right one. Also, the left acetabulum is significantly shallower than normal."

"And this tells us what?" - asked Cam in her best "Lab mother" voice.

"That the victim had a condition known as developmental dysplasia of the hip."

"Excellent find, Mr. Bray," - said Dr. Brennan as she and Booth walked up to the platform.

"And in English?" - asked Booth.

"Her hip bone wasn't all the way up in her hip socket," - explained Wendell.

"See, now why couldn't you just have said that to begin with?"

"I'm assuming this is a condition that would have associated medical records?" - asked Angela.

"Yes, and even better, there are indentations in the left femur that indicate regrowth from holes due to surgical treatment."

"Okay, I'll cross-reference that information with the missing-persons database and this sketch I did from the skull," - Angela replied, holding up her drawing of the young girl.

"She looks so happy," - said Hodgins almost wistfully. Angela smiled back.

"She died while she was at camp – what kid isn't happy at camp? At least she died while doing something she loved."

"How is it that she always manages to make even analyzing the death of a kid seem like it has a silver lining?" - Hodgins asked in awe as Angela walked back to her office. At that, Cam rolled her eyes and began to leave the platform.

"Let me know when you find cause of death," - she said.

"What was that for?" - asked Hodgins, giving Cam one of his patented "you're so dead" glares along with a slight chuckle.

"You are not seriously asking me to get involved in this again."

"There's nothing to get involved in. Angela and I are just friends, like we have been for over a year now."

"Uh-huh," - Cam said knowingly.

"Okay, who's being paranoid now?"

"Guys, I found something!" - Angela shouted up from her office. As the team walked down off of the platform, Hodgins turned to Wendell.

"She is being paranoid, right? That wasn't weird, what I said earlier?"

"No, I completely agree with you – Angela's pretty amazing. I don't know why Dr. Saroyan would be suspicious of what you said."

"Yeah, okay. Wait, why do you think Angela is amazing?" - asked Dr. Hodgins defensively, with just a touch of protectiveness in his tone.

"I- I don't know. She just, you know – like what she did earlier, making everything seem all better, all good and happy. The same reasons you do."

"Yeah, somehow I doubt that."

"Rowan Alters, reported missing July of 2006, the day after she returned home from camp," - Angela interjected.

"The day after she returned home? Then why were her bones found at the camp?" - asked Dr. Saroyan.

"That is what Bones and I are about to go find out," - said Booth.


End file.
